When journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates set out to write about police killings he went to visit Mable Jones. Back in 2000, Jones son, a friend of Coates from their time at Howard University, was shot and killed by police in Virginia. He was twenty five years old. Written in the form of a letter to his own teenage son, Coates’ book “Between the World and Me” puts police shootings in a wider context. Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke as...

Black Lives Matter. This simple phrase has become the motto of a growing movement calling for true justice and equalty for black people. Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, first typed out those three words back in 2013. In March of 2015, Alicia Garza visited the University of Southern Maine to tell the story of how Black Lives Matter came to be, and express her hopes for where it’s headed. We hear her speech. Featuring:...

Following up on last week’s show on police shootings, Making Contact’s George Lavender interview Julie Perini one of the producers of “Arresting Power: Resisting Police Violence in Portland, Oregon” about the “ghostly scratchings” she created at the sites of police violence. Listen to the entire show here: http://www.radioproject.org/2015/02/deadly-force-police-shootings-in-black-and-white/ And for...

Why are so many of those killed by police young people of color? A recent ProPublica investigation found that a young black male is at twenty one times greater risk of being shot dead by police than his white counterparts. On this edition of Making Contact we’ll hear from one of the reporters who analyzed the data on police killings to come up with that startling conclusion, as well as stories of family and community members who...

Yesterday evening was a time of protests, marches and mourning across the country as news broke that a grand jury had decided to not indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Micahel Brown on August 9th. Making Contact’s George Lavender and Jasmin Lopez collected photos and videos from Oakland, CA as the verdict was released and emotional protesters took to the streets. All photo and recording by Jasmin Lopez....

Over 6,000 migrant deaths were recorded on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico between 1998 and 2013. The true number of deaths is likely higher, and thousands of families never hear from their loved ones again. Bill Clinton’s presidency marked a major shift along the two thousand mile US-Mexico border. The border enforcement strategy know as “prevention through deterrence” was implemented, and those who...

Tweet us

Show Topics

Welcome to the new Making Contact website!

We appreciate all of the support our community has shown us over the years and we're hard at work developing new tools and features to help us tell your stories. Take a look around, let us know what you think and send over any suggestions for the site and our content.